FAB Tour Championship
A week a go Dave Larson and I headed out to Maple Lake west of Buffalo. Four teams qualified for the FAB Tour divisional championship this year. Our team struggled the last two tournaments of the year and lost the lead for the anglers of the year title, but we were hoping to take home one last check for the season. The Championship would pay more money with less competitors so hopes were high.
In practice we had found fish holding on deeper structure and a couple outside weed lines. We figured we could get around 10 pounds but weren't sure if that would win it for us.
We started on a mid lake hump that topped out around 15 feet and feel off into 20-30 feet. As usual the fish had moved since we practiced. We worked all over the hump without a bite. A couple other stops also produced nothing. Finally we hit some of the weed lines that had held fish in practice and we started to catch a few fish. Nothing big but keepers. My fish were coming off a drop shot with a watermelon Zipper worm. Dave was throwing a mojo rig and a jig but wasn't getting too many bites other than a big northern that stole his jig.
The weather was hot and calm. Once we had five fish in the live well, we decided to move up shallow and start throwing frogs to hopefully pick up a kicker or two. It only took a couple casts before Dave had a blow up on a spro frog pulled over some matted milfoil. I started to throw a Gambler Cane Toad. We both caught a keeper fish off a log sticking out of the mat. One was able to cull for us. We only had about 45 minutes till weigh in so we moved to the thickest matted stuff we had seen earlier. From that point the bite was on. It was probably the best frog bite I have ever had the fun of taking part in. Every third or fourth cast a fish would smash our frogs. Several fish came clear out of the water often missing the frog. They could be caught though with a quick throw back. We caught probably seven or eight fish in the 40 minutes we had to fish but we could only use two of them. The fish all seemed to be 12-14 inches. Not the type of fish you expect in a large milfoil mat.
As we headed to the scales we weren't sure how well we had done but we definitely had some fun. We finished with a little over 10 pounds. Only good enough for 3rd place. 15 pounds won the night. They all came from a single deep spot that the winning team sat on all three hours of the tournament. A pretty good spot I guess.
In practice we had found fish holding on deeper structure and a couple outside weed lines. We figured we could get around 10 pounds but weren't sure if that would win it for us.
We started on a mid lake hump that topped out around 15 feet and feel off into 20-30 feet. As usual the fish had moved since we practiced. We worked all over the hump without a bite. A couple other stops also produced nothing. Finally we hit some of the weed lines that had held fish in practice and we started to catch a few fish. Nothing big but keepers. My fish were coming off a drop shot with a watermelon Zipper worm. Dave was throwing a mojo rig and a jig but wasn't getting too many bites other than a big northern that stole his jig.
The weather was hot and calm. Once we had five fish in the live well, we decided to move up shallow and start throwing frogs to hopefully pick up a kicker or two. It only took a couple casts before Dave had a blow up on a spro frog pulled over some matted milfoil. I started to throw a Gambler Cane Toad. We both caught a keeper fish off a log sticking out of the mat. One was able to cull for us. We only had about 45 minutes till weigh in so we moved to the thickest matted stuff we had seen earlier. From that point the bite was on. It was probably the best frog bite I have ever had the fun of taking part in. Every third or fourth cast a fish would smash our frogs. Several fish came clear out of the water often missing the frog. They could be caught though with a quick throw back. We caught probably seven or eight fish in the 40 minutes we had to fish but we could only use two of them. The fish all seemed to be 12-14 inches. Not the type of fish you expect in a large milfoil mat.
As we headed to the scales we weren't sure how well we had done but we definitely had some fun. We finished with a little over 10 pounds. Only good enough for 3rd place. 15 pounds won the night. They all came from a single deep spot that the winning team sat on all three hours of the tournament. A pretty good spot I guess.
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